


my heart an earthquake

by Sorrel



Series: Native Skin [2]
Category: Killjoys (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelingsporn, Post-Season/Series 02, also porn-porn, partnership is the best ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 02:59:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18682765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: In Dutch’s dreams, Arkyn is a graveyard.





	my heart an earthquake

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: this fic touches on the emotional aftermath of a traumatic sexual experience, but nothing involving any kind of assault or coercion. Specifically, it touches on Sabine's temporary "death" during what otherwise looked like a really fun bout of sex in "I Love Lucy."
> 
> A coda, of sorts, to [ain't nobody left can sing the blues](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15692361), but doesn't necessarily need to be read to understand this. Set fairly early in the gap between seasons 2 and 3, and _slightly_ Jossed since they didn't sleep together that summer but otherwise more or less canon-compliant.
> 
> Title from "Waving Wild" by Arum Rae, which you may or may not recognize as the song that played when Dutch and D'avin had sex the first time. Yes, I think I'm very clever.

In Dutch’s dreams, Arkyn is a graveyard.

She picks her way across the snowy surface, pulling her hood closer around her face to block out the chilly bite of the wind. The ground underneath her feet is treacherous, windblown snow over black ice, and she steps carefully, eyes on the horizon, trying to reach the tower.

A chasm suddenly yawns open in front of her, and she stops, pinwheeling for balance before she manages to fall backwards onto solid ground. She lands with a soft _thump_ in the snow, and hears a soft laugh behind her. She scrambles up into a crouch, spinning around to face the source of the sound, and finds-

Aneela, smiling back at her. She’s wearing a simple black dress with no shoes, apparently heedless of the snow, and her hair blows loose around her shoulders. Dutch stares, caught like a deer in the headlights at the sight of her, so utterly out of place, so utterly alien.

So utterly familiar.

“Welcome home, little bird,” Aneela says, and it’s only then that Dutch can see the dagger in her hand, the blade stained dark with blood. Can see Johnny, kneeling at her feet, his blue eyes wide and terrified as Aneela’s hand clenches in his hair, draws back his head, bares his throat. “I was worried you’d miss the show, but you got here just in time for the grand finale.”

_No,_ Dutch thinks, but she can’t say it; the cold has stolen all her words. She’s frozen all over, unable to move, to speak, even to scream when Aneela lifts the blade and brings it down across his throat-

-and wakes, sweating and too-warm, pinned to the mattress by an arm wrapped tight around her middle.

There's a bad moment where all she can think is _trapped, trapped, TRAPPED!_ , and she's halfway to reaching for her blade before she remembers: the mission. Her talk with Fancy. Her talk with D'av.

D'av.

She takes a deep breath and forces herself to relax, opening her eyes and taking stock of her surroundings. She's on the inside of the bed, nearest the wall and facing the nightstand. It's covered by a jumble of PDDs and spare ammo clips, the faint glow from the nightlight partially obscured by her shirt dangling from the corner. She can see the rest of the clothes in little heaps on the floor: there her boots, with her pants and underwear dropped carelessly on top; there her bra, flung haphazardly aside in the heat of the moment.

Behind her, D'avin makes a sleepy noise of protest and tightens down his grip, tugging her back impossibly closer into the warm curve of his body and nudging his cold nose against the nape of her neck. She lies there for another minute, her heart pounding for no reason she can name, before his grip loosens enough that she can slide out from under his arm and clamber out of bed.

She pulls on underwear and boots and, after a moment’s hesitation, snags D’avin’s t-shirt from where it’s draped neatly over the corner of his open locker door. His is longer, and it’s chilly out in the hall.

The bathroom's right down the hall from D'avin's room - which is why he always manages to snag first shower in the morning, the greedy bastard - and she makes it there without running into Fancy, thank fuck. She makes sure the door is shut before flipping on the light, wincing away from the sudden glare before her eyes adjust enough to see her own reflection in the mirror.

Aneela grins back at her, bloodthirsty and smug, without a care in the world. “I hate you,” Dutch tells her, and determinedly turns away to the toilet.

After she’s done she splashes some water over her face and pads back into the hall, hesitating only a moment before making the turn back into D’avin’s room, grumbling at herself for being predictable the entire time.

Her plans to crawl back into the warm cocoon of blankets are dashed when she sees that he’s awake, if barely; sitting up and scrubbing his hands over his face like a little kid. Her shirt’s gone from the night light, either fallen or pulled away when he woke up and couldn’t see, and she finds herself frozen in the doorway at the sight of him, her heart suddenly rabbiting off at a hundred miles an hour. She can't see his eyes. Fuck, what color are his eyes-

His hands drop into his lap, and he looks up at her, his blue eyes bloodshot and hazy with sleep, and she lets out a breath, her pulse roaring in her ears.

His gaze flicks from her face to her hands, still clenched into fists at her sides, and then the corner of his mouth ticks up in a rueful smile. "Not armed," he says, and turns his hands palm-side-up on the blankets, so she can see they're empty. "My sidearm's in my locker there to your right, if you want to grab it."

She closes her eyes at how fucking _understanding_ he looks. " _No,_ I don't want to grab it. I don't even know why I- I'm sorry."

"No need to be," he says, still gentle. She opens her eyes, and the other corner of his mouth quirks up, almost a smile for real now. "I'm the last person you need to apologize to for this shit."

And the thing is, normally, when people say, _you don’t need to apologize,_ what they mean is, _I shouldn’t want you to but I’m going to be mad if you don’t_. Dutch hates that. She had enough of those sort of games growing up in the harem, and it was a grave disappointment to get out into the wider world and discover that most people do the same stupid shit the ‘verse over.

Not D’av, though. What you see is what you get with D'av, nothing more and nothing less. He’s not like Johnny, every thought he ever had written across his face for anyone to see; he’s quieter, more closed-off. Defensive, maybe, or just less trusting. But he doesn’t play games. There’s no dishonesty in him, which means that when he says things like _you don’t have to apologize_ she knows that he means it.

Which is why it’s easy to say, “Well, I’m sorry anyway,” and sidle the rest of the way into the room, sliding the door shut behind her and trying to calm her pounding heart. “Also sorry to disturb your sleep. I didn’t think I’d wake you.”

He tips one bare shoulder in a shrug. “No worries. I was just getting up to close the door, figured you’d gone back to your room.”

She could have, is the thing; she knows D’av wouldn’t have taken it personally. Both of them are picky about their personal space, and he knows better than most how hard it can be to fall asleep in an unfamiliar space, the way instinct can keep you awake and watchful even when logically you know there’s no danger. She searches his face for any hint that he was upset at the prospect and finds nothing, just a general sense of pleasure that she’s back and a vague appreciation of the sight of her in his shirt and not much else.

_Fuck,_ she thinks, looking at his sharp-boned, handsome face, unshaven and creased from sleep, his hair sticking up a little in the front and that sleepy look of understanding in his eyes. She knows she could ask him for anything, and he’d bitch and he’d make jokes and he’d get up and do it, no hesitation, because she _knows_ him, as well as her own steady right hand.

_Dutch, you idiot. You never learn._

“Nah,” she says, and folds her hands across her stomach, grabbing the hem of his t-shirt to pull it off with one smooth gesture that she damn well _knows_ looks good. “I mean, I was sleeping so well in here.”

When she emerges from pulling the t-shirt over her head it’s to see him looking at her, all that sleepy attention fixed now, like a hunting dog going on point. “Well, I’m definitely not feeling tired anymore,” he drawls, his voice gone even lower and deeper than usual, the low intimate grit of it going right to her cunt. “Think maybe you can help with that?”

“I can think of a few ways.” She kicks off her boots and steps out of her underwear, tossing it aside and, when his gaze automatically flicks to the side to follow it, closes the distance between them with a single leap.

It's not a big mattress, and she lands half on top of him, startling a grunt of surprise out of him as his hands come up automatically to steady her. She squirms into a better position, straddling his thighs and ‘accidentally’ tugging the blanket down from his lap while she’s at it, and then dimples down at him with her very best _hello sailor_ smile. “Hi.”

"Hi," he says back. He smiles back up at her, helpless, automatic, but there’s a question in his eyes. "This feels familiar."

"Hmm, me too." She drapes her arms around his shoulders, linking her fingers loosely behind his neck. “Weather’s a bit better, though.”

“Among other things.”

“Hmm.” She grinds down into his lap, blatant, unsubtle, and feels the curve of his soft cock twitch against her thigh, starting to get interested. "You complaining?"

“No complaints,” he breathes. His hands flex on her hips; quick on the uptake, that’s her boy. "Full marks. Ten out of ten."

"Really? I think I can do better than that," she says, and strokes her fingers over the back of his head. None of them have had much time for haircuts recently, and his has gotten just long enough that she can get her hand into it, can trap it between her fingers and tug. "I'm going for that extra credit."

He lets out a soft breath that's almost a moan, his pupils dilating in the quiet semi-dark between them. "Dutch-" he says, and she doesn't make him ask for it, doesn't want to hear him beg for something she’s already ready to give, just leans down and lets him take her mouth with his.

The first few moments are slow, tentative, D’avin making sure of his welcome the way he never bothered the first time. When she parts her mouth against his, lets him feel the lush wet inner curve of her lip, he gives a small rumbling noise in the back of his throat and _goes_ for it, his hands clenching down on her hips like she's going to try and get away and taking the kiss from zero to warp speed, no transition in between.

Their first time was just as fast, faster even, and she was right there with him, knowing it was a bad idea but not wanting to stop, desperate to feel something that wasn't the crushing weight of her own guilt and shame, echoed back at her in his seaglass eyes. He had her on the counter two seconds into the first kiss and she had his shirt off three seconds after that, just in case he got any ideas about slowing down, and then her shirt was gone and he was kissing down her neck, full speed ahead, just the way she needed it. Last night wasn't that different; they were needy, hurried, practically shaking out of their bones to fuck. But here, in the dark reaches of the night, he's still rushing, pushing forward like she's going to change her mind if he takes too long to get to their destination. She knows he'll slow down when they get to the good part - no issues with speed _there_ \- but...

She strokes her fingers over the back of his neck and gentles the kiss, sucking on his tongue slow and wet and nipping at his lips, red and parted for her. He follows her lead, right with her like he always is, slowing down and letting her work him over, needy little moans welling in the back of his throat. She can feel herself getting wet again at the sound of it, at the press of his cock swelling to full hardness against her thigh, at the knowledge that all she'd have to do is shift a little back and _down_ -

She leans up instead, reaching back to fetch his hands and tugging them up over his head, pressing them against the wall. The motion not-coincidentally puts her tits right in his face, and she smiles at the way he practically goes cross-eyed, trying to look down at them and watch her face at the same time. "I think you remember what to do with those," she says, husky even to her own ears, and he nods eagerly and leans forward, lapping at her nipple with eager lips and tongue. When she presses his wrists harder back against the wall, he moans and starts to suck in earnest, his teeth catching at her nipple and his tongue flicking around the hard point, his hands straining against her grip like he wants to reach for her but can't, can't, can't-

" _Good_ boy," she breathes, and his moan is shockingly loud in the quiet of the room. "You're so good-"

He breaks away from her breast with a gasp. "Dutch- Dutch, please-"

Her clit is one slow throb, and she can feel her slick on the inside of her thighs, the loose ache from where he fucked her open only hours before. "I know, baby," she croons. "I'm going to give you what you need. I'm going to make you feel so good."

His face is like one big exclamation point of need, dazed and wide open for her, his hazy eyes fixed on her face. It’s a good look on him, her favorite, and she luxuriates in it a little, watching his face as she straightens up and then shifts back and down. It takes a bit of wriggling a little to line up with his cock - if either one of them had a hand free, it’d be easier, but she’s not willing to relinquish her grip on his wrists - but when she gets it right she has to close her eyes at the press of it, the long steady _stretch_ that’s one of her favorite parts of sex.

Or maybe _this_ is her favorite, when she bottoms out with a breathy moan and tightens her thighs around his hips, starts up a rocking, easy rhythm she can feel all the way up to her belly button. She loves all kind of sex, with all kind of partners, but there’s a certain kind of pleasure to being filled, the blood-warmth of him and the lazy tension winding him up between the grip of her thighs.

When she opens her eyes, though, all it takes is a glance at his face to realize it’s not exactly the good kind of tension. His gaze is fixed on her face just a little too desperately, the lines of his face set in strain, and if she didn’t know better she’d think he was-

Terrified.

“Hey,” she says, stuttering to a halt, one hand going to his cheek, the other steadying herself on his chest. “Hey, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He’s silent for a moment, like he’s about to deny there’s a problem, and then- “Can we… change position, maybe?” His voice is thin with tension despite his best effort to play casual, and she can feel him going soft in her, not quite enough to slip out but getting there. He pastes on a grin and rubs his thumb over her hip. “Let me do some of the work so I don’t feel too useless, huh?”

She knows him too damn well to accept that piss-poor attempt at playing it cool. “Never that,” she says, and strokes her thumb over his cheek. “D’av, c’mon.”

He screws up his face, the same childish stubbornness he always gets when he doesn’t want to answer a question, then sighs and gives way. “It was… Sabine,” he says, avoiding her gaze. “This was the position we were in when she… I mean, I was _inside her_ when she-”

_She revealed herself when we... were having sex,_ D’avin had said, back then, and she hadn’t taken him _literally,_ had thought he’d meant when they were making out, or fooling around, or-

“Gods,” she says, grimacing, and scrambles off with a lot less grace than she usually has for a dismount, flopping down to the bed next to him. “I’m sorry. Should have realized.”

“How could you have?” He rolls up onto one elbow, smooths his hand down her side. “Look, I’m sorry for ruining the mood. I could, uh…”

His fingers play over her hip, brushing against her belly, and his hopeful, slightly awkward expression makes it clear what he’s offering. “Save that thought for later, soldier boy,” she says, vowing not to let either of them fuck it up this time, and draws his mouth down to hers instead.

They kiss for what feels like hours but probably isn't more than a few minutes, time stretching out in the sleepy, limitless way of late nights and early mornings. She feeds at his mouth, needy, teasing little pulses of lips and tongue, until she can feel him pressing himself against her again, only half-conscious of doing it. She wriggles just free enough to reach down and catch the length of his cock in the palm of her hand. He’s back to half-hard and damp from her juices, and he makes a shocked little noise when she rolls the pad of her thumb over the warm, smooth head.

“Don't think you get off so easy. I’ve got plans for this still.”

“I’m not, complaining,” he pants out, eyes half-closed. His cock twitches in her hand, and slowly starts to fill back to full hardness, teased by her long, twisting strokes. “What did you- ah!- have in mind?”

She rolls over onto her back, tugs at his shoulder with her free hand until he rolls with her, smoothly as any one of his takedowns on the mat. He ends up hovered over her, caging her in with hips and elbows, all the warm weight of him settled delightfully between her thighs. “This,” she tells him, with one last, luxurious stroke before she puts both her hands up next to her head. “I remember you being pretty good at this part.”

“ _Shit,_ yes,” he says, nothing on his face now but eagerness, and she can feel him between her legs, fully hard now, the head nudging against her clit and sending lovely little sparks up into her belly and thighs. “You sure?”

“Sure I’m going to hurt you if you don’t _get on with it,_ ” she says, and he laughs and tugs her thigh up around his waist and pushes into her.

He’s good at this part - unfairly good, actually; she’s always felt vaguely resentful about it. Given how bloody _cocky_ he can get it’d only be fair if he was terrible in bed, but even the first time she’d known he wouldn’t be. He’s good at reading people, patient when it counts, and entirely too eager to please for him to live down to the kind of boring, too-fast rut that people with his kind of swagger usually deliver. Instead she gets this: a slow rolling grind of a fuck, pinned at the hips to the mattress, his hands grabbing hers, holding them to the pillows, to his hip, to anything he can reach. His forehead is pressed almost desperately into hers, his panting breaths washing across her face, and she wants to keep her eyes open, wants to see the lust and desperation on his face, but it’s damn near impossible when he’s fucking her _just right,_ her eyes rolling back as he wrings moans out of her throat she’s probably going to be embarrassed about later.

(Practice _,_ she has to admit, has definitely made perfect in this particular instance.)

He doesn’t try for a marathon, which she finds only sensible; they’ve had a long day and she’s always more eager the second time around, and unlike D’av, patience has never been her strong suit. But something about the lateness of the hour, or maybe the faint greenish glow from the night light lends the entire thing a slow, dreamlike kind of quality; she keeps forgetting to chase her orgasm and just revels in it, his steady, relentless rhythm and the jackrabbit pulse of his heart when his chest presses against hers. He’s so _warm_ , when she’s always so cold, and he smells like sweat and leather and the pleasantly neutral cleanser she stocks for Lucy’s showers - familiar smells, comforting smells, and she loves the sheer visceral size of him, the weight of him between her legs and the way he presses her down into the mattress-

Her orgasm seems to come out of nowhere, not a lightning strike in the dark but the slow inevitable force of a wave crashing against the beach, and she clings to him as it takes her, shuddering, one hand laced through his on the mattress and the other clenching down on the big muscle in his back. He gives a surprised grunt and fucks her through it like a champion, until it ebbs, leaving her shivering through the aftershocks. She manages to regain enough control of her limbs to tug clumsily at his shoulder, pulling him down until she can say in his ear, “Come on, D’av. Come for me, do it,” and he buries a shout in the curve of her neck and does what she tells him just like always, grinding in with one last heavy thrust and pulsing inside of her.

He hangs there for a moment, panting, and she strokes soothingly at the back of his neck. A moment later, he gathers himself enough to pull out of her, yanking a surprised and pleasurable hiss as the tug of his still-hard cock against her entrance, and then flops down next to her.

The sound of their panting breaths fills the space between them, and Dutch lets it, content for the moment to lie there in the dark, her pulse slowing. Eventually, though, D’avin lets out a short, sharp sigh, and rolls up onto his elbow.

“Guess I’m not holding up my end of the bargain for the ‘sleeping’ thing, huh?”

As opening gambits go, it’s not bad. Much better than the alternative. “I’ve no complaints,” she says, smiling and rubbing her foot along his calf. “I, personally, am feeling _very_ sleepy.”

“Yeah.” He’s silent for a moment, and she can’t quite read his expression in the low light, which is a warning sign she doesn’t heed until- “So, is it early enough to count as morning, or..."

_Aaaand there’s the catch._

“Nevermind,” he says hastily, catching sight of whatever expression she didn’t hide quickly enough. “Don’t worry about it. My bad for bringing it up."

He makes as if to roll away, and she catches his shoulder, holding him still. “No, wait. Just give me a second.”

“Seriously, don't worry about it." There's a line of tension in his shoulders that on anyone else would make his words a lie, but she knows D'avin too well for that. If he's disappointed in anyone, it's always, always himself. "It's late. We should try and get some sleep before tomorrow's inevitable crisis."

“D’av,” she says, and stalls. If he didn't mean it, it wouldn't be so godsdamned difficult. “D’av, I-”

_I want strings too,_ she wants to say. _I want this, just this, for as long as I can have you. I’m not kind and I’m not gentle and Johnny took the only good part of me when he left, but I’d try, if you wanted me to. You’re my fucking partner. There were always going to be strings._

But she can’t forget her dream: Aneela’s hand in Johnny’s hair, the the blade in her hand a twin to the first one Dutch ever used, all with that sharp-edged, glittering smile, the same one Dutch has seen on her own face in the mirror more times than she'd ever admit. She knows it’s not prophecy, that she isn’t Aneela and Aneela isn’t her, and that there’s no such thing as destiny and even if there was she’s not _destined_ to ruin everything she cares about. If Khlyen taught her anything, it’s that: there’s always a choice. You might not like your options, but there’s always one to make.

_Even Johnny didn’t stay, in the end,_ Aneela’s voice whispers, seductive and smug because she knows she’s right. _What makes you think D’avin would be any different? Because you fucked him? Please. You’re not_ that _good of a lay._

“I'm not saying- never.” She hears the the plaintive note in her voice and hates herself for it and her cowardice both. She ducks her face into his shoulder, not wanting to see his expression. “I'm just saying… someday."

It’s not the promise that he knows he wants, that he _deserves_. He’s been through so much because of her, and he should have something better than her weak prevarications. But it’s not _no strings,_ either. It’s something. Maybe that’s enough.

After a moment, his hand comes up, tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Yeah,” he sighs, and then he takes her by the jaw, tips her face up towards his. “Yeah, boss, that works for me.”

She closes her eyes as he leans down and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I’m not your boss. I’m your partner.”

“You’re a little bit my boss,” he says, sounding amused. He noses affectionately at her temple. “Bossy partner. Partner-boss.”

“You didn’t seem to mind earlier.”

“No, ma’am.” He rolls over onto his side, taking her with him on sheer force of momentum, and nudges her down until she’s arranged to his satisfaction, tucked inside the curve of his long body with his arm wrapped around her waist. “No complaints from me at all.”

_It won’t last,_ she thinks, her throat aching. Something will always come along to ruin it, sooner or later. She had six good years with Johnny, started to let herself think that maybe- But nothing lasts. She knows that now.

“Good,” she says, and lets herself settle back against his body, lacing her fingers with his. “Let’s see if you still say that in the morning.”

His voice is already a blur, fading out fast. When his brain’s not fucking him over, D’av has a soldier’s knack for dropping off, awake one moment and gone the next, like flicking a switch. “Why’s that?”

“I kick in my sleep.”

He gives a quiet grunt of amusement. “Dutch, you kick when you’re awake, too.”

“Good, then you’re used to it,” she says, and closes her eyes to the sound of his sleepy chuckle.

Everything ends eventually. But that doesn’t mean it has to end right now.


End file.
